My car is a 2006 V70 with the 2.5 turbo and I wanted a little more pep.
From perusing the forums, I had settled on the trouble-free Polestar tune as done by the Volvo dealer. It’s not the cheapest, it’s not the one yielding the most performance, but it’s the one where I found no negative comments or issues with the car after install.
I want the same “Death Valley in the summer” and “Winter in Alaska” reliability the car left the factory with, so for me the goal was improved driveability for commuting and road trips.
As I’m told, changes are made to boost, throttle and timing and a tweak to the transmission controls.
The big difference I can FEEL is that the car seems more intuitive. It seems to be a 1:1 correlation between the pedal and how the engine and trans responds instead of the more “translated” (for lack of better term) response of the stock tune.
The big difference I can see is that it’ll boost up to 12(ish) PSI instead of the 9(ish) it did before.
The transmission seems more ‘modern’ too. It wants to shift up a little earlier and doesn’t mind ‘bogging’ more than before. I can slow down and remain in 4th or 5th and let the torque pull me instead of downshifting and let the gearing pull me like it did before.
I picked the car up late Friday afternoon and only managed 416 miles on the car over the weekend and it just seems more enthusiastic. I’d say the difference is slight enough that someone getting in my car might not be able to tell it has the tune unless they just got out of one without it.
I ended up paying $850 out the door for it (including annual inspection, AC, brake and alignment checks) of which $701 was the software and fancy packaging and the rest was labor. I did get a discount, but it’s still a good amount of money for the tune without a huge difference in feel.
That small difference in feel is pretty vital and really refreshes the feel of the car, so end result is that I really like this tune and wish I had done it the day after I got the car.
Now I just need to get back to the dyno and see what the numbers say!